In fact, and regardless of the Singularity, for quite some time now we’ve been studying the ageing process in animals, with an especially keen eye towards the human species, in the hopes of being able to substantially delay said process or even to revert it and make it possible to rejuvenesce an ageing body into a younger, healthier one.

As it turns out, our bodies appear to have a definite expiry date after which, no matter how sound our mind is, they’ll simply shut down, independently of our efforts to keep them healthy. Assuming the following article accurately reflects the state-of-the-art of our knowledge about human ageing, trying to keep this body around for much more than a century is a losing proposition.

In  ”Your Body Wasn’t Built To Last: A Lesson From Human Mortality Rates” the author explains how

By looking at theories of human mortality that are clearly wrong, we can deduce that our fast-rising mortality is not the result of a dangerous environment, but of a body that has a built-in expiration date.

Now, even if we can’t live forever in our own bodies, we’ll still be inside them for quite some time, as the expected life span of the average human being increases (whether or not we do hit a biological limit). So what can we do to be better able to cope, then?

Well, some people are thinking about ways to enhance the human body, in order to make it more adapted to our living conditions here on earth. This could be taken to the natural conclusion in the form of a process of gradually replacing body parts that become defective. This process may have it’s appeal for some but it is also a controversial issue with it’s fair share of hot buttons (“When do I stop being a person and become a machine?”, “Am I less of a person as a Cyborg?”, “Am I the same person I was when I began the process?”, “And if not, when did I become a different person?” and so on and so forth…)

Others are working on ways to preserve and even enhance our brain’s abilities but only at a very small, personal level (no big society-scale jump here).

Personally I don’t put much stock in the possibility of making our current frail shells last forever, preferring to bank on another staple of the Singularity concept, which is the idea that after it comes to pass, we’ll very soon be able to codify our minds (which is not the same as our brains exactly, but does include them) in such a way that will allow us tu upload them to a different container, be it a computer, a computer network (living in the clouds, anyone?) or a new, physical, engineered body. And some container that will be, can you imagine our ability to design such things by then?

Now the fun part comes when we try to ponder such a possibility under the light of our current moral standards. If the concept of incremental body enhancements through technology is a controversial one, what can be said about the concept of living as a bodiless entity, or about the concept of “self” when your mind can be uploaded and, thus, *gasp* copied!

Fun stuff indeed.

This article was written by Charles Stross, go read about him, if you don’t know how he is. We are generally rather partial to his writings here at OneOverZero.

First off we read about Jaron Lanier‘s opinion that many singulitarians’ discourses feel uncomfortably close to religious indoctrination. Then he goes on to point out that the singularity is used mainly as a way to excuse people from making decisions and taking responsibility for their own lives and future.

Then we learn about Paul Root Wolpe‘s objection to the concept of the singularity as a single event that suddenly transforms our lives forever. If I understand his arguments, he basically asserts that we’ve often been promised such radically transformational events before and they’ve often failed to materialize as such and, instead, whatever major disruptive events and advancements we’ve experienced have mostly brought us new unknowns and the possibility of further major changes in the future.

The author of the article, Jason Gots, then goes on to opine that

In reality, the future may be much closer in some respects to William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic Neuromancer, in which biotechnology and artificial intelligence solve some of our problems, only to introduce a myriad of new ones.

Now, before I go any further, I must say I do hope I’m not misrepresenting any of the ideas or positions presented in the article and if I am, it is my mistake and I’ll correct it if it is pointed out to me.

I must say I find Jason Gots’ opinion to be rather according to my own view of things. In fact I don’t see any of the arguments posed by the so called “discontents” as arguments against the notion of the singularity itself. Instead they feel to me more like a list of important and rather valid points about our lives in the present and the way we think about progress and science in general.

I do agree that many self-proclaimed singulitarians sound and act more like bogus religious cult leaders than like rational, scientific-minded people. I also agree that no kind of technological advancement should ever excuse us from deciding what we want for ourselves (or what we should want for ourselves) at any given point and especially they should never excuse us from going after what we want or need. Finally, I too don’t think the singularity will happen as a big bang kind of event, changing everything in a split-second. But I do think it will change everything forever. And change will be fast. Too fast for most of us to follow. But then, wasn’t it always like that? Didn’t people also complain, when the printing press was invented, that they were being overloaded with information, now that all those newfangled books were being automatically printed left and right? And they probably were being overloaded. People at that age just couldn’t cope. But then the human brain kept evolving and, most importantly, our methods evolved to be able to deal with the new complexity our world had just gained.

And so it went with many other advances in human civilization. Right now we (again) feel overwhelmed by so much information being thrown at us from all around. Many (maybe most) of us just can’t cope. And when the singularity rolls around, people on our level of intelligence will be left in the dust. But our descendants may learn to cope, they will most likely be equipped with the tools necessary for the job (yes, brain implants, bionic sensors and more) and there’s a real possibility that instead of destroying mankind, the singularity will actually elevate it to a whole new level of existence. Maybe.

In short, I actually do agree with most of what is said and still, I don’t find evidence against the singularity itself or the possibility of it happening. Just some discontentment with humans, mostly as they stand now.

It makes for a rather involved reading, as Mr. Muehlhauser goes to some pains to explain his ideas in great detail. It also has just begun to delve into the Singularity analysis itself, the first few posts having been dedicated to laying the groundwork for the explanations he intends to put forth.

The views expressed in it are rather grim, as far as mankind’s future go, but the points are really well researched and make for a blog well worth reading.

I’ve been delving quite a bit into the area of Machine Learning lately and the idea described in this article struck me as something that is quite obvious in hindsight (but then what isn’t?)

I found it especially interesting that this is an idea for improving the human species’ capacity for learning which can trivially work today, without any fancy bio engineering or brain augmenting of any kind.

Now granted, this would not make us super-smart and able to deal with new problems all of a sudden, but I do wonder, if we rise the average knowledge of the population in a significant way, wouldn’t that, in itself, pave the way for faster evolution?

We’ve actually thought about this at OneOverZero, but we framed the discussion as pertaining to Individual Entity Rights, not “human rights”. We even got so far as to create a Charter for the Rights of Asylum for Turing capable digital entities. I think it is easy to see where our opinion would lie in this poll.

The interviews cover a wide range of topics and are generally very interesting with insights into specific areas that are dealing with ethics issues right now, or are preparing to deal with them in the foreseeable future.

Beware, though, this is not exactly light reading.

Once again the lobsters, singularitarians, tech-heads, geeks (and the just plain curious) are summoned to discuss, basically, the meaning of 42.

Come meet us after work on Thursday, May 12th, at Hennessy’s for a few beers, chips and light-hearted discussions about our collective future, the way we’ll get there, and how in the post-scarcity future there will be no need for financial bail outs.

In keeping with our ongoing attempts at tackling the issues that are a-coming with the singularity (which is about to unleash any day now, you just wait and see), we are going to convene again this coming Saturday.

Hopefully, this time there will be no genetically evolved virtual car distractions and we will nail the whole trans-human bit down once and for all.

Failing that, there will be beer.

Come meet us at Hennessy’s Saturday evening (at around 19h00) for a good discussion about oh… Life, the Universe and Everything ™.

Once again we’ve been too long without contemplating the inevitable coming of our robotic overlords. Or without having a few beers together.

This cannot be!

So to right this wrong we’ll convene again next week on Thursday, February 24th, from 18h30 onwards, at O’Gilins, near Cais do Sodré.

Come one, come all, this is the return to a well loved spot and to deep conversations about life and the future of humanity. Also, have I mentioned there will be beer?